Tuesday, March 06, 2007

What Do You Believe - A Tuesday Rambling Rant

Okay first off Tuesday seems to be the hardest day for me to find a topic to talk about. For the most part this blog is comic centric and the occasional pointing out by me of what I perceive to be major problems facing our country. Lee has joined with me in doing what I hope are some fun reviews of books coming out and he has also done some nice slice of life posts. Brainiac6 has also chimed in with some nice post on comics and made me envious that I got her a scanner for Christmas. Monday is my preview of my insane buying habit, Wednesday is Lee's post, the other days are easy to do a comic review, but Tuesdays are a killer for me. Many other bloggers have some fun posts every day and their ability to produce that work on a daily basis is pretty damn amazing. Sure they could write all of it on one day and just post from there but that is a lot of material.

Now if anyone has read the longest preamble to a relatively short blog, congratulations. The title of "What do you believe" refers to the fact that I no longer really implicitly trust any source of information anymore. As we have gotten into the information age everyone seems to have more of an agenda then ever before. CNN news, CBS news, Fox news and the rest all seem to have an agenda. Corporate America has an agenda, the political parties have an agenda, even entertainment news has an agenda. So what should anyone believe.

Is illegal immigration a huge problem? Is global warming really occurring? Is peak oil a true problem? Are we facing a major financial crisis in the next 10 years? Are comic sales better or worse then 10 years ago? Will Brad Pitt ever marry Angelina Jolie? Who is the father of Anna Nicole's baby?

As the news reports stream across your TV screen, the radio or on the internet I now screen everything through a b*llsh*t filter.

Is illegal immigration a major problem - yes. I see the results in what I observe and feel that if we ignore this basic rule of law for 20-30 million people then what is the point of having a rule of law.

Is global warming occurring - I don't know and I think no one actually knows. There are cycles that our planet goes through and I believe that the environment is so complex is we can't really figure it out. Are we impacting our environment - absolutely, should we try and respect what we have - absolutely - is Al (Chicken Little) Gore right - no he isn't.

Is peak oil an issue - yes. No resource is endless. Have we reached peak oil, I don't know, but the empirical evidence is that certain regions have reached their maximum production. The idea many people like to have is that man's ingenuity will find a new resource and all problems will be solved. Good luck with that. I think a stronger energy policy and conservation would be warranted, but as more countries move forward, the energy demands of the world will only increase.

Are we facing a major financial crisis in the next 1o years - I think we will. The baby boom generation has been a driving force in putting more and more money into the markets and that has kept the markets going up for years. When my generation all starts to retire we will become a bigger and bigger drain on those monies and what goes up must come down. Also the medical field will be pushed with a larger and larger older population. With some true leadership we can try to resolve this issues, but AARP and other groups fight to let nothing change. We will live in interesting times.

Are comic sales better or worse then 10 years ago - who knows. The advent of trade paperback and hard cover collections has changed the dynamic. Monthly books have lower sales, but the overall market may have higher sales.

As for the last two questions - who really cares?

Bottom line is draw your own conclusions on every subject, but don't rely on one source and apply a simple logic test to anything to see if it makes sense or not.